Why did the Roman Empire, which dominated Europe and the Mediterranean for five centuries, inexorably weaken until it disappeared? Archaeologists, specialists in ancient pathologies and climate historians are now accumulating clues converging on the same factors: a powerful cooling and pandemics. A disease, whose symptoms described by the Greek physician Galen are reminiscent of those of smallpox, struck Rome in 167, soon devastating its army. At the same time, a sudden climatic disorder that was underway as far as Eurasia caused agricultural yields to plummet and led to the westward migration of the Huns. Plagued by economic and military difficulties, attacked from all sides by barbarian tribes, the Roman edifice gradually cracked.
Ten years after an enormous open-pit gold mine began operations in Malartic, the hoped-for economic miracle is nothing more than a mirage. Filmmaker Nicolas Paquet explores the glaring contrast between the town’s decline and the wealth of the mining company, along with the mechanisms of an opaque decision-making system in which ordinary people have little say. Part anthropological study, part investigation into the corridors of power, Malartic addresses the fundamental issue of sustainable and fair land management.
On August 15th, 2006, filmmaker Ryan Dacko set out to get a 30-minute meeting with a major Hollywood producer by running on foot from Syracuse, New York to Hollywood, California.
In 1937, tens of thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent were exterminated by the Dominican army, on the basis of anti-black racism. Fast-forward to 2013, the Dominican Republic's Supreme Court stripped the citizenship of anyone with Haitian parents, retroactive to 1929, rendering more than 200,000 people stateless. Elena, the young protagonist of the film, and her family stand to lose their legal residency in the Dominican Republic if they don't manage to get their documents in time. Negotiating a mountain of opaque bureaucratic processes and a racist, hostile society around, Elena becomes the face of the struggle to remain in a country built on the labor of her father and forefathers.
In the 1920s, former coal miner Harry Hoxsey claimed to have an herbal cure for cancer. Although scoffed at and ultimately banned by the medical establishment, by the 1950s, Hoxsey's formula had been used to treat thousands of patients, who testified to its efficacy. Was Hoxsey's recipe the work of a snake-oil charlatan or a legitimate treatment? Ken Ausubel directs this keen look into the forces that shape the policies of organized medicine.
A group of college students leave New Haven, CT on bicycles and plan a 4,000-mile adventure to benefit Habitat for Humanity.
The Host : Histoires de famille
Two unique perspectives on the city of Liverpool come from interviews with the director's parents.
In 1900, the eyes of the whole world are on Paris. The World's Fair welcomed 50 million amazed visitors, and the city celebrated itself in a glamorous era. This period went down in history as the "Belle Époque." Elaborately restored and colorized historical photographs bring to life the exciting life in Paris between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of World War I in 1914. Bicycles, cars, airplanes, moving pictures, newly founded film studios, revolutionary composers and painters, avant-garde ballet performances, fashion houses, summer resorts on the Atlantic coast – life was intoxicating. People celebrate in the variety shows, cabarets, and revue theaters of Paris. Moulin Rouge, Folies Bergères, Bal Tabarin—in Paris, the nights are long and life is too short to sleep through. It is a dance on the volcano, given the political developments in the world.
Fleeing religious persecution, resilient Jewish immigrants arrive in Toronto and begin building affordable, quality housing in a growing metropolis.
The mysterious chi is presented as a force that can be produced by the master and defies all explanation.
James Cameron, Jon Landau, and Kate Winslet reflect on the making of Titanic, sharing unseen footage, behind-the-scenes insights, and memories that shaped cinema’s most unforgettable love story.
21-year-old Keith Blauschild, formally trained in the culinary arts, is also a self-taught ice carver. Together with his fiancee Angela Boone, Keith sculpts intricate but impermanent artworks for catered affairs, hotels, cruise ships and for advertising promotions. In this short documentary profile, Keith is filmed as he fashions a prototype (a sword-bearing warrior fighting a dragon) for an upcoming ice carving competition. At the contest site, the young man joins scores of other chainsaw-wielding sculptors busily freeing their creations from blocks of ice. Although Keith does not win a prize, his devotion to ice-carving remains intact. Moving from his home in New Jersey to a new life in Florida, Keith is featured as the "Person of the Week" on a Florida news broadcast
A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.
A humorous documentary about the search for a great composer who managed to overcome his depression by spelling his own name wrong.
When indie comic character Pepe the Frog becomes an unwitting icon of hate, his creator, artist Matt Furie, fights to bring Pepe back from the darkness and navigate America's cultural divide.
An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.
Cao Bang, les soldats sacrifiés d'Indochine
Some 20 years ago, two sex workers were murdered in an upper-class Brussels neighborhood. Celebrated Belgian magistrate Anne Gurwez decides to revisit this cold case, pouring over the evidence with the use of new technologies and tracking down then-suspects.
This third opus will take us into the homes of some of the Adamant and Averroes & Rosa Parks’ protagonists, during the visits led by their caregivers.